us blot on the
landscape, that the guide-books were disgracefully out of tone, that it
was unbearable and he wasn't going to bear it, and by his sudden
satisfied smile I saw he had found out how not to. As the school-ma'ams
came within earshot:

"It's beastly hot," he boomed to us, "what do you say to a swim?"

And he took off his coat, he took off his waistcoat, he took off his
necktie, he unbuttoned his collar,--but already the school-ma'ams had
scuttled away, the more daring glancing back once or twice as they
went, their dismay tempered by curiosity.

Furse was pleased as a child over his success, vowed he was ready for
all the tourists impudent enough to think they had a right to share
Versailles with us, and, when a group of Germans talked their guttural
way towards us, he had us all down on our knees, before we knew it,
nibbling at the grass like so many Nebuchadnezzars escaped from
Charenton--an amazing sight that brought the chorus of "Colossals" to an
abrupt stop, and sent the Germans flying.

It may be objected that we were behaving in a fashion that children
would be sent to bed without any supper for, that it was worse than
childish to take pleasure in shocking innocent tourists much better
behaved than ourselves. But there wasn't any pleasure in it. If we set
out to shock them, it was to get rid of them, that was all we wanted,
and it made me see that the succession of young rebels who have loved to
_epater le bourgeois_ never wanted anything more either--except the
self-conscious young rebels who play at rebellion because they fancy it
the surest and quickest way "to arrive."

It is less easy to say why a beautiful day at Versailles should have
sent us back to Paris singing American songs--or to give credit, if
credit is due, it was the rest of the party who returned to the music of
their own voices; I, who to my sorrow cannot as much as turn a tune,
never am so imprudent as to raise my voice in song and so add my discord
to any singing in public or in private. Had they been heard above the
noise of the train, the explanation of those who saw us when we got to
St. Lazare probably would have been that we were a company of nigger
minstrels. By accident, or sheer inattention, when we climbed upstairs
on the double-decked suburban train, we chose the car just behind the
locomotive and memory has not cleaned away the black that covered our
faces when we climbed down again.

It was all very foolish--and